Yet Another Report Says More Innovation, Rather Than More Enforcement, Reduces Piracy

It's not like many of us haven't been saying this for years: but fighting piracy through greater copyright enforcement doesn't work. It's never worked and it's unlikely to ever work. A year ago, we released our big report, The Carrot or the Stick?
that explored at a macro level what appeared to lead to reduced levels
of piracy -- enforcement or legal alternatives -- and found overwhelming
evidence that enforcement had little long-term impact (and a small
short-term impact), but that enabling legal alternatives had a massive
impact in reducing piracy. This should sound obvious, but it was
important to look at the actual data, which backed it up.

The researchers say that in order to compete with unlawful file sharing
(UFS), easy access to information about the benefits of legal purchases
or services should be given in a way that meets the specific benefits
UFS offers in terms of quality, flexibility of use and cost.

The team looked at the extent to which the unlawful sharing of music and
eBooks is motivated by the perceived benefits as opposed to the legal
risks. Involving almost 1400 consumers, the research explored people's
ability to remain anonymous online, their trust in the industries and UK
legal regulators such as Ofcom, and their downloading behaviour.

It's a very different approach to our own research, but the conclusions
remain almost identical. In short, the researchers found that for people
who really "trust" regulators, then the threat of punishment was
effective. The problem, however, is that not that many people actually
trust regulators. That leaves officials with two choices: increase trust
in regulators, or... figure out ways to incentivize more legal,
innovative alternatives. And, of course, one way to destroy trust in
regulators is to support policies like expanding copyright enforcement.

Co-author Dr Piers Fleming, from UEA's School of Psychology, said: "It
is perhaps no surprise that legal interventions regarding UFS have a
limited and possibly short-term effect, while legal services that
compete with UFS have attracted significant numbers of consumers.

"Our findings suggest that it may be possible to diminish the perceived
benefit of UFS by increasing risk perception, but only to the extent
that UFS is considered emotionally, and users trust industry and
regulators. Increasing trust in industry and regulators may be one route
toward encouraging UFS to be considered in emotional rather than
rational terms. However, given the limited impact of risk perception
upon behaviour, a better strategy would be to provide a desirable legal alternative."

So, that's common sense and two very different studies with very
different approaches -- all suggesting the same thing. And yet,
politicians, regulators and legacy industry folks still insist
that ratcheting up enforcement is the way to go. What will it take for
them to actually follow what the evidence says, rather than continuing
with faith-based copyright policies?